Everyday, I get up, and the first thing I hear is the voice in my head telling me I'm not worth it.
Everyday, I take a shower, and I wonder why I bother trying to keep going.
Everyday, I go to work, and I know that there I'm valued, not as a person, but as free labor.
Everyday, I come home, and I'm reminded that I'm alone in the deepest sense.
Everyday, I eat dinner with self-hatred for company, with guilt and depression as side-dishes.
Everyday, I get online, hoping that someone will ask me to hang out, hoping that someone will value my company enough to seek it out.
Every evening, I spend my time hoping for things to get better, and knowing that experience says they won't.
Every night, I sit and stare at something, anything, to distract myself from the pain that lurks in every shadow.
Every night, I go to bed, and I give in to the pain, and the fear, and the loneliness, and I cry myself to sleep.
How do you explain that to people? I mean, people know what it's like to be depressed. Everyone has gone through that at some point or another. But few know what it's like to live like that constantly, day in and day out. To me, getting up in the morning is a struggle. The first thing I hear in the morning is the sound of my own demons telling me that I shouldn't bother trying, and that's what I've heard every morning for the past 11 years. At the age of 8, I knew I was worthless. Can someone who's never been there truly understand that?
I go through every day trying not to give up. I can pretend to be like everyone else for a while, but the monster lurks at the edges of my vision. I never know when it's going to strike me down, when it's going to pull me from the edge of the light into the deep darkness I'm constantly trying to escape. In the middle of a good time, I can go from being happy to being suicidally depressed, and I have no control over it. It's not fun, not being able to control your own emotions. It takes over your life in ways you can't imagine. You become afraid of people, because your brain tells you they all hate you. The people you love make it loudest, because it hurts the most. It makes you hate to look in the mirror, because it tells you that you're ugly, and worthless, and only fit to beat and hate. It makes you feels stupid, and little, and useless, and ugly, and terrible, and like you're a bad friend, and a bad person, and a waste of air. I apologize so often because my brain tells me that I'm hurting people by trying to talk to them. How do I say that I can't talk because I can't think of anything to say, and that, even if I did, I don't have anything worth saying? My experiences are filtered through a glass of self-hatred and darkness. Why should I bother?
It's like there's a devil on your shoulder whose only purpose is to make you doubt yourself and hurt as much as possible. It wants you to give in. It wants you to die, and some days, fighting it is like trying to hold a river still. Whenever I'm awake, and often when I'm asleep, I hear it telling me that I'm a burden to those who know me, and I can't protest anymore. Every day, I have to fight the thought that killing myself would be the kindest thing I could do for the people I love, because having me there is bad for them.
Worst of all, it takes away who you are. I was, once upon a time, intelligent, and witty, and engaging, and somewhat confident. It took that away. I used to be curious and driven. These days, I put so much energy into just making it through the day that by the end, I don't have the energy left to be curious, or resourceful, or driven. And I miss that part of myself so badly. You cannot know how much it kills me that I let this beast drive that away. Worse, I don't know if I can ever get her back.
I seem my friends (the few that I have), and I wonder how they do it. They all seem to be able to function above and beyond the basics. They all have friends, and go out with people, and go fun places and do amazing things. God, I can't blame them for not wanting to hang out with me. I want that so bad. I just... I can't figure out how. How do you make friends? How do you not worry? How do you find these people and these places and these things? How do you be happy? Then there are the ones who travel and see places. I've wanted to travel for years. I just can't see it as an option. And I can't even rationally explain what stops me from all of these experiences. It's like, people explain it to me, but it doesn't compute with my brain. People say "don't be so down." That's easy to say when you don't live in the dark. They say "Act happy". I cannot tell you how exhausting is to pretend. I can't put a smile on when my heart is dying. It's too much. I want friends, but I want to be able to be real, and this is who I really am.
I want have friends, but nobody really wants to hang out with me. No one ever calls me up and says "let's hang out." or "let's go to coffee.". People say they will, but they won't. I'm tired of being the only one to make effort in my friendships. Do you understand what it takes for me to put myself out there, and put the effort in? At the end of the day, I just want to cry in a corner until I pass out. To put the energy into trying to be your friend, I must see something really special in you. But I can't do it alone anymore. I'm too tired. Please, if you don't want to be my friend, just say so. I can't put that kind of energy into something that's not reciprocated. It's too much.
It's so hard to just survive, and I want so much more. I want to be able to do good things in the world. I want to be a functioning member of society. I want to be able to go places and do things without worrying about whether my mood will do an untriggered about-face.
I want to move beyond surviving. I want to thrive. I want to
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